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The Least Developed Countries are defined as low-income countries confronting severe structural impediments to sustainable developement. The current list of LDCsLeast Developed Countries includes 49 countries; 33 in Africa, 14 in Asia and the Pacific and 1 in Latin America. They comprise more than 880 million people (about 12 per cent of world population), but account for less than 2 percent of world GDP and about 1 percent of global trade in goods.

The category of LDCs was officially established in 1971 by the UN General Assembly to attract special international support for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged members of the UN family. Membership of category is reviewed every three years by the Committee for Developemnt Policy (CDPCommittee for Development Policy), which advises the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOCUnited Nations Economic and Social Council) on which low-income countries should be added to the list and those that could be graduated from the list. In this regard, the CDPCommittee for Development Policy has developed a set of formal criteria to identify countries as least developed.

LDC-specific international support measures can assist these countries to meet the targets established at Istanbul. However, LDC capacity to use these measures is limited, in part because there is a general lack of understanding of what LDC-specific support is, whoWorld Health Organization their main suppliers are, and what is needed to access these resources. It is the main objective of this portal to address this problem by compiling and cataloging in one single place information about currently available LDC-specific support.